Who's really 'presenting lies as facts'? How State Dept. exposes itself to propaganda

In 2005, at 25 years old, Margarita was named Editor-in-Chief of RT, the first Russian round-the-clock English-language news channel. Later on, after the launch of RT in Arabic (Rusiya Al-Yaum) and RT in Spanish, she became Editor-in-Chief of the whole multilingual television news network. Margarita Simonyan is also the first Vice-President of Russia’s National Association of TV and Radio Broadcasters (NAT).

Richard Stengel, the US Under Secretary of State (Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for TIME/AFP) / AFP

Mr. Richard Stengel, the US Under Secretary of State who wrote such an impassioned “takedown” of RT in the US State Department blog, did get one thing right.

Propaganda IS the deliberate dissemination of information that
you know to be false or misguided.

And boy, does Mr. Stengel make a valiant attempt at propagandizing,
because anyone would be hard-pressed to cram more falsehoods into
a hundred words:

“From assertions that peaceful protesters hired snipers to
repeated allegations that Kiev is beset by violence, fascism and
anti-Semitism, these are lies falsely presented as news. (...)
Consider the way RT manipulated a leaked telephone
call involving former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia
Tymoshenko. Through selective editing, the network
made it appear that Tymoshenko advocated violence
against Russia. Or the constant reference
to any Ukrainian opposed to a Russian takeover of the country as
a "terrorist." Or the unquestioning
repetition of the ludicrous assertion last week that the United
States has invested $5 billion in regime change in
Ukraine.These are not facts, and they
are not opinions. They are false claims, and when
propaganda poses as news it creates real dangers and gives a
green light to violence.”

How many FACTS does Mr. Stengel attempt to deny? Let us count:

- Yulia Tymoshenko herself has confirmed
the authenticity of the conversation that included the following
statements: “This is really beyond all boundaries. It's about
time we grab our guns and kill those damned Russians together
with their leader.” And “I would have found a way to kill those
a***es. I hope I will be able to get all my connections involved.
And I will use all of my means to make the entire world rise up,
so that there wouldn't be even a scorched field left in Russia.”
While there was indeed some controversy about a small portion of
the recording being altered, Ms. Tymoshenko herself pointed to
the source of the tape, not RT, as the guilty party, and the
statements quoted above were not in question. Bottom line: if it
appears that Ms. Tymoshenko is advocating violence against Russia
and Russians – it’s because she blatantly is.

- Forgetting for a second the absolutely ludicrous supposition,
even in theory, of a Russian “takeover” of Ukraine, RT refers
those supportive of the current authorities in Kiev as “anti-autonomy,”
“pro-unity protesters” and “pro-Kiev
activists.” But you know who is keen on throwing around the
“terrorist” moniker? Why, that would be the newly-minted,
US-supported Ukrainian government, applying the term to its own
people (source: BBC News), as it sends tanks against the
anti-government protesters – something that even President
Yanukovich, for all his faults, refused to do.

- Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was the one to
publicize the $5
billion “investment” in Ukraine’s “European future,” framing it
in terms of the United States’ support of Ukraine achieving
preconditions for “its European aspirations.” Interestingly
enough, that “European future” and those “European aspirations”
by definition blatantly ignored and/or rejected the aspirations
of the 37 percent of Ukrainians who desired closer relationship
with Russia via a trade union, as opposed to the 39 percent in
favor of
joining the EU (source: Kiev International Institute of
Sociology). How much of that $5 billion went to support the
institutions that aided their interests
and how much support did Ms. Nuland et al. lend to the
democratically-elected president who
represented them? Right. Not that anyone is particularly
surprised. Wouldn't be the
first time that the US benignly “invested”
in “democracy” (sources: Washington Post).

How is RT behind the “protesters hired snipers” assertions if
those concerns were brought to light by the famous leaked (and
confirmed
authentic – source: CNN) Ashton-Paet
call, by quoting a Maidan medic whose credibility they went
to pains to establish? The statement that “there is now stronger
and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not
Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition” came not
from RT but the Estonian minister.

And why is the far-right, neo-Nazi threat
in Ukraine being so flippantly dismissed despite being
documented by dozens of Western mainstream media
outlets (sources: BBC Newsnight, The Nation, Channel 4 UK)?

The reason you’re seeing citations of sources right here, in the
text, is so that it cannot be labeled as another “propaganda”
piece full of RT’s own “false” reporting. Or does Mr. Stengel
consider all media organizations that report inconvenient facts
that challenge his reality to be propaganda outlets? It is very
disappointing that a person of his position knows so very little
of the reality of the situation in Ukraine, but it certainly
explains a lot about the state of US foreign policy.